THE FANATIC – Review by Liz Whittemore

John Travolta is one of our most iconic actors with his wide range of roles from Grease to Saturday Night Fever and then his triumphant comeback in Pulp Fiction. His portrayal of hitman Vincent is sexy and cool. It reminded us what we had been missing after years of mediocre roles. Travolta was a bonafide Hollywood movie star. That’s what makes him producing and starring in a The Fanatic so damn perplexing.

While never flatly stated in the film, Travolta’s character Moose is very clearly on the autism spectrum. Bouts of echolalia, full-body rocking, and expressly missing social cues lead the audience to feed off his anxiety. Sounds like a superb character study but to be quite frank, Travolta’s over the top idiosyncrasies are borderline offensive. Continue reading on I SCREAM YOU SCREAM.

Liz Whittemore

Liz Whittemore is the author of AWFJ's I SCREAM YOU SCREAM blog. She is Co-Managing Editor and writes for www.ReelNewsDaily.com, hosts the podcast Girls On Film and is a contributing writer for Cinemit.com and The ArtsWireWeekly. Now New York-based, she was born and raised in northern Connecticut. She's a graduate of The American Musical & Dramatic Academy, and has performed at Disneyland and famed Hartford Children's Theater, and been a member of NYC's Boomerang Theater, Connecticut's Simsbury Summer Theater, Virginia's Offstage Theatre, where she also directed. Her film credits include Suburban Skies and Surrender. In 2008, she shot Jabberwocky, a documentary now in post-production. Liz is still a children's theatre director and choreographer. She's working on an updated adaptation of Romeo and Juliet and a series of children's books.